


A page ahead of the rest.

by TheCustodian



Category: Original Work
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Light-Hearted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-30 22:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17837222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCustodian/pseuds/TheCustodian
Summary: A light-hearted comedy following the antics of a less than functional librarian workforce and their newest employee.





	1. The first day.

Alice looked at the four stories tall building that stood proudly on the corner of the city square. Its white marble brickwork outlined pristine cleaned windows that reflected the turquoise sky flawlessly. The double doors stood open, welcoming in book lovers or just people who happened to need Wi-Fi without wanting to eat a quarter-pounder. The sign above the door read “The South Yorkshire central library” and on either side of the entrance were perfectly shaped hedges in the shape of open books facing the square. It looked like the most normal place in the world, or it would if there wasn’t a snow white horse with a black star on its forehead lazily chewing its way through one of the hedges. 

She had flashbacks to the job interview, in which she had been at first interrogated by what she had presumed was the head librarian. The ruthlessness of her questioning had almost deterred her from the job until a man had entered the room through the air vent and told her to answer her phone. After much confusing involving a calculator being mistaken for a phone and a plug-in air freshener for a charger the ordeal was sorted. However, the rest of the interview had been dealt with by a large heavily muscled man. The interview from that point had gone smoothly, until the man had stood up to shake her hand and broke the table. 

She got snapped out of her daydream as the horse unloaded a full magazine of its freshly digested hedge, with exactly the same amount of subtlety as a Boeing 747 taking off. With a freshly released abomination tarnishing the pavement outside the otherwise pristine library she strode in with her most pleasant face. As she passed through the threshold of the front doors she saw two people arguing she recognized the head librarian from her tall, slim figure and her elegant yet simple office-ware. She was shouting at a man of what appeared to be Japanese ancestry, not to mention he was wearing a samurai’s hakima and was carrying a yumi bow. “I don’t care if the book is in Buckingham palace, just go and get it back!” the man shrank back as the women reached for a book on the counter. “But erm… Lindsey I don’t mean to speak out of place, but even I might have trouble infiltrating the most guarded house in the country.” Taking a deep breath and hoping they were practicing for a play she began to introduce herself. “Hi, my name is Aliagdhad!” 

The last part had come out funny as the 'Big ol’ book of Dinosaur study and wolf evolution' narrowly missed her head and thudded into the wall behind her. Breathlessly she looked up from her crouched position to see the man clad in samurai wear fleeing into the non-fiction section and the head librarian about to take up chase. “DO YOU MIND!” she hadn’t meant to shout; in fact if you think about it a library is the last place to shout, yet the librarians had already broken those rules. So stuff it, she thought. “I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU HIRED ME!” she pointed an accusing finger at the librarian who looked as if the ghost of her mother had just risen and told her to make her a cup of tea with four sugars. “AND YOU HAD BEST QUIT THROWING BOOKS AT ME BEFORE I FIRE MYSELF BY PUMMELING YOU INTO THE GROUND!” 

“I’m so sorry; I was aiming at the idiot dressed as a samurai.” Alice snapped out of her rage as she realized the librarian was grovelling. The show of utter compliance compared to the one of dominance shown before was just a little bit sad. Deciding to take pity on the older women she walked over and changed her face back to her pleasantly warming smile. “It’s OK, I’m sorry for shouting it’s just my first day so I’m a little nervous is all.” She looked at the librarian who smiled with closed eyes. After about thirty seconds the librarian stood still smiling. “Ah yes, you must be…”


	2. It's not that bad.

The rain drummed against the window of Alice’s new bedroom, if a still used storage room can even be referred to as such, as the sun disappeared behind a sheet of dark grey. Typical British weather. She started unpacking the light suitcase she had bought with her, then realized she had nowhere to unpack to and re-packed it. Sighing she reckoned she would have to buy all her own furniture, but hopefully she could get her boss to move the full boxes of dentistry books that were littered about the room, and the one copy of ‘Technology for Dummies’ that had evidently been burnt by a ruffian with a deodorant can and a lighter. It was at this stage that she found out she didn’t even have a bed. 

Sticking her in a storage room had been a push. Not giving her a place to stick her clothes was infuriating, but not the end of the world. Forgetting that they’d even hired her had been almost enough to make her want to quit. But not giving her a bed; that was one step too far. These thoughts all pervaded her as she stormed down the stairs to the third floor, which was mostly under construction for a new cafe but also housed the books on subject matter like Art, History and apparently the study of grooming Alpaca’s. As she began her descent of the second floor staircase she ran into the muscular man who had taken her interview, and seeing as he was the nearest viable vent for her anger she began shouting. 

Alice smiled to herself as she watched the man build her a bed out of spare bookshelf parts, a spare mattress and as she had put it “EVERY DAMN PILLOW THAT SOMEONE ISN’T ALREADY SNORING INTO!” With great effort the man had calmed her down and explained that he was Wayne and his job was to run the maintenance of the building. At which point she had ordered him to make her a bed with all the compassion of a drill sergeant informing his troops to march forward into a minefield. Finally after what had appeared to be a lot of complaining about how he isn’t paid enough, he stood up and proudly said. “Done!” The bed was simple but functional and more importantly covered in a throne of pillows at the headrest. “Thank you, Wayne. I’m sorry I made you do all this, it was actually the boss’ fault for forgetting about me.” Wayne merely shook his head, “S’alright, I’ll have a word with the boss tomorrow to see bout getting the books moved out. And for all its worth Alice, you’ll fit right in around here. Have a good ‘un.” “Night Wayne.” She said as the door slid shut. Finally she could go to sleep. No more problems to deal with today. No more useless boss. No more odd characters, just her and her perfectly good bed. She lay in its warm embrace, and the entire thing broke underneath her.

After much cursing into empty air and more than a few tears she finally fell asleep on a mattress atop a pile of what can only be described as the most uncomfortable pile of splinters in the universe. As she walked down the staff corridor to the canteen prying pieces of wood from her hands and feet she noticed that there were labelled dorm rooms and storage rooms. Rooms one to four had names on them and the rest were simply named storage rooms. She glanced back at the storage room number nine with its number slanting at such an angle that it looked like a whistle. Sighing at her accursed luck she simply cast a thought to the broom cupboard under the staircase that resembled something of a teenage wizard’s bedroom back at her home. Anything was better than that. Or at least she had thought, but if she had to spend one more night on what felt like a bed of nails she would happily settle for a cardboard box on the street.

Shaking her head, Alice reached out for the door handle to the staff canteen. Nothing would stop her from getting breakfast, except maybe by getting hit by a ballistic missile. She opened the door full of confidence that nothing bad would happen. Unfortunately, her guess was dangerously close as the spine of the hard-back copy of 'The catalog of ballistic missiles and other long range armaments.' Struck her square in the forehead. Quickly running out of patience the pointless antics of this workplace she attempted to hide her anger with a smile but it came out as a more, ‘I’m going to kill everyone in this room if someone doesn’t own up and apologize right now’. And the two occupants of the room turned slowly to see the demon they had just awoken. The Samurai looking fellow fell to his knees in a less than graceful bow and started muttering something about “going for men with shy?” The other occupant, the one who had thrown the book just looked on in shock at the thin trail of blood now running past Alice’s left eye. 

Now with a full bowl of cereal, a cup of steaming hot tea (Which had taken the girl four times to get right) and a bandage wrapped around her head. Alice sat at the kitchen counter looking at the two characters that had ruined her otherwise perfectly good morning, well barely humanitarian at a push. “This explanation better be pretty good otherwise both of you are going to be answering to Lindsey.” At the mention of the head librarian they both visibly tensed. Then the book thrower in question talked; her voice quiet and soft, almost as if she feared that saying the wrong thing would get her thrown to the wolves. “Well George was sent out to collect an overdue book, which he did. But when he returned it yesterday he placed it in the “B” section of fiction.” She glanced at the floor, and in the reflection of her eyes you could see her tapping her feet together under the counter. “And how does this matter in any way whatsoever?” Alice asked, slowly loosing patients for the girl. I mean who can ruin tea four times?  
The girl seemed to shy away at the question and Alice realized she had put her murderers grin back on. George seemed less affected but still kept his eyes firmly on the counter. “Because the book is called ‘Zebra’s, Unicorns, dragons and other mythical creatures’, and too my knowledge it is the only non-fiction book on floor one that begins with the letter ‘Z’.” His astoundingly calm and monotone voice almost completely hid his amusement about the whole situation, but his mischievous grin was a more tell-tale sign of how he truly felt. Rubbing her temple’s as the situation that had ruined her morning gave way to a stupid prank. “Why did you put the book in the “B” section?” “Would you believe me if I said I don’t know the alphabet?” Alice didn’t realize she had punched him until he had fallen off of his stool backwards holding his suddenly bloody nose. “Ooooww! Why the hell did you do that?!” 

Reaching her boiling point for the umpteenth time in twenty four hours she calmly stood up walked around the counter past the startled shy girl. She stood face to face with George, whose white Samurai wear was now splattered with his own blood. “Because I am already fed up with the stupidity of your pranks, because I spent last night sleeping on a bed of splinters after Wayne made a bed with all the skill of someone building a sandcastle with their foot and because I’ve been hit in the face with a book. Breathlessly she stepped back from George who was now staring at her gaping mouthed. She realized that she may have gone too far and the man equipped with a fully functioning bow with very real arrows looked at her as if she had just told her that he had a duck bill for a mouth. "You got the maintenance guy to build your bed?" Said George, before bursting into laughter.

At first Alice thought this was a nightmare. I mean it had all the qualities of a nightmare. Nothing made sense; all the normal things that made the world turn around didn’t seem to apply here. But with much pinching she realized this was reality. Alone in her room surrounded by books on how to make your teeth as shiny as possible while staying within the regulated guidelines of health she was found by her boss. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Alice. Let’s get your induction tour over and get you working.” Alice didn’t have the energy to question why Lindsey hadn’t thought to check the room in which she slept first, but the thought crossed her mind as she dragged herself to her feet and removed a couple of splinters that had embedded themselves in her rear. Dreading what awaited her outside the door she followed her employer out of the room. The rain still thundering down against the window as she closed the door behind her on the dreary room. 

For all the uselessness of the workforce the library was actually very well built, and very well maintained. Which raised some dubious questions as to how Wayne managed to monumentally ruin her bed, but that all slipped her mind as she looked into the main entrance from the second floor balcony area to see a horse sat eating what looked like a cook-book and the girl who had assaulted her with a catalog wrestling it. “Faith just give it up. When Oda gets his teeth into something, you’ll need a whole rebellion to usurp his grip and even then he’ll probably hold onto it until he’s dead.” Lindsey allowed herself a chuckle at what was clearly a far too historically based joke for Alice to understand. “Also we need all the staff members present for our first meeting with Alice.”  
Finally, they made it to the bottom floor and headed into an area labelled ‘comfort zone’. As Alice entered she saw Wayne who was attempting to fix a clock by stuffing a sock in it, George in a fresh samurai outfit making an arrow, Faith flicking through a list mounted on a clip board that no doubt labelled every book of a certain section of the library in alphabetical and numerical order. Also there was another team member who Alice hadn’t met before. The plain looking young man sat on his laptop and didn’t even glance up as they entered, it was only when the boss walked right up to him and coughed loudly that he glanced up. He removed his headphones from his straight and altogether unimaginative hair style and then went back to typing on his laptop. 

“I’d like to open the meeting by introducing Alice, our newest librarian.” Stated Lindsey ushering a hand to Alice. Aside from the sound of laptop keys being rapidly pressed and a “tsk” from George as he cut his thumb open on the sharpened tip of the arrow nothing was said. “Anyway back to business as usual.” Breaking the silence, Lindsey continued as if nothing was amiss. “George, I hope you were able to retrieve the book that was two weeks overdue from William?” She had barely finished her sentence as George triumphantly stood and opened his mouth as if he was about to break into a truly magnificent tale of how he had retrieved the book. “Good, now Oscar.” She said, turning her back on the already disappointed LARPer. “How many books were taken out this week?” Oscar seemed to stop typing for a second before calmly announcing “Four.” before continuing to press the keys. A nerve erupted on Lindsey’s forehead, Wayne smothered the cogs of the clock with butter, the horse trotted through the room chewing casually on a copy of 'Gangnam Style – The book', Faith watched in horror as her category of songs in book form needed revisiting. 

“I asked how many books did we have borrowed this week?” Lindsey said, as if repeating the question would increase the pathetic amount. Oscar, who openly sighed, turned the laptop towards his boss displaying a giant number four. Lindsey looked like she was about to slap the pale man but instead just clenched her fist to the point where it started bleeding. “So, how are we supposed to keep this place open if we have no register of books being taken out?” She asked through clenched teeth. George, Wayne and Faith shared a worried glance before Oscar piped up enthusiastically. “But the usage of the library computers is up by seventy people, and more than a hundred signed up for library membership after we introduced free WIFI for members.” With a smile he looked to Lindsey for approval only to stare right into the maw of a demon. A very annoyed demon. Lindsey stared daggers at Oscar for a while longer before seemingly calming down. “A Library is such for it allows the public access to books, if I wanted to run an internet café I would’ve become a barista.” Pausing to allow her words, that she probably thought were wise, to sink in. “So does anyone have any ideas to increase the amount of books borrowed?”  
“Maybe not throwing books at people as they enter would be good.” Alice muttered under her breath. “Good suggestion, well keep it in mind. Any others?” Said Lindsey, making note of the sarcastically intended muttering. Shaking her head in disbelief at the antics of such a workplace she opened her mouth as if to say something when a noise brought the meeting to an abrupt end. The doors to the library had opened. Someone had entered the building.


End file.
